Steve Austin comments on the HHH/Steph wedding, Jeff Jarrett, and More

Reported by Paul Nemer of WrestleView.com
» On Monday, November 3, 2003 at 1:10 PM EST

Sir Adam of GetInTheRing.tv sent in the following interview recap:

Can’t say much more than Stone Cold Steve Austin raised some hell on Get in the Ring this week. He was in a great mood, and you have to hear this one for yourself at www.getinthering.tv. Buy “The Stone Cold Truth” at your finer book merchants, it’s worth the price of admission.

Tune in every week to Get in the Ring, Sundays @ 7pm ET, 540 AM WLIE in the New York area, or live on the internet at www.getinthering.tv. On November 23, 2003 get ready for Kurt Angle live on GIR !

-Steve Austin joined the show, as the boys went over the difficulties getting him on for an interview because of his hectic schedule. Austin confirmed that earlier in the week he was so tired that he fell asleep , “like a jackass” at the airport and missed his flight to NY which screwed up all radio interviews he had scheduled. Phantom talks about how the book publicity person said that he would do the GIR interview at 7:45 AM, and immediately thought there’s no way Stone Cold Steve Austin is going to get up that early. To that Steve replies, “Your right, I got up at 4:30 in the morning that day!”. Needless to say he’s on a hectic book tour schedule, and Phantom brings up “The Stone Cold Truth”, and how much coffee Austin drinks, as he describes in the first chapter what led up to his health scare the day before Wrestlemania 19. “That’s why I had to back off, I was drinking so much damn coffee my heart nearly exploded…Beer is good for you I’ve come to that conclusion that it cleans the crap out of your veins. And if it adds a little weight to your waist well that’s the risk you take.”

-Austin brings up the HHH/McMahon wedding, “it was the nicest damn thing I’ve ever been to. And then Michael Hayes sees fit to go up there and sing some songs, and Linda McMahon proceeds to yank his ass off the stage.” To which Phantom asks if she was laughing at all at the situation, “Let me put it this way it was an extremely nice situation, and you have a Fabulous Freebird up there singing a horrible, horrible rendition of whatever it was he was trying to sing. I don’t think Linda McMahon was too proud of him.” Sir Adam says that maybe the McMahons will see fit to move Michael Hayes’ office into the broom closet, “There aint no tellin’ up there….Of course his bullet proof excuse was ‘hey what’s a Freebird supposed to do?’…He was one of my favorites to watch when I was a fan going to the Sportatorium and he’s a nice enough guy, but get a couple cocktails in him and look out!”

-Austin confirms he has a new girlfriend, but the story he told on Howard Stern that she slapped him on their first date wasn’t true “I was just playing, I guess a love tap is better to explain it. Damn you are on the radio I had to jazz it up a little bit. What am I gonna say, we were holding hands??”

-Phantom talks more about the day before Wrestlemania, when Austin had a “panic attack”, and says that’s the most interesting part of the book, because if you watch Wrestlemania again Austin looked fine walking to the ring for his match against Rock and no one would know the hell he was through the day before..”I guess it was a panic attack, all I know is everything was going fine, I worked out with Kevin Nash, when I walked off that elevator everything just went haywire, I thought that was it.” Looking back at it Austin wishes Rock “worked more heel or even completely babyface, and I would have worked babyface. Just for the sake of having a hell of a match, what turned out was a basic match not too many highs or lows….I just didn’t want to come back and stink up the joint” On a possible ring return, “They keep running scenarios by me, medically my neck is pretty shot…. I’m not looking to further any neurological damage I already have…I’ve never really planned anything long term, but now what I am planning long term is a little quality of health…if you look 15 years down the road what would I be looking at? I pushed the envelope pretty damn hard, I was lucky that I wasn’t paralyzed that one time, as far as my career goes to answer your question I had a pretty great career can you see me in the ring at Wrestlemania 20? You could….in the ring working with someone? If all the doctors get together and says one more time would be cool, and they throw the dollars at me…I’ll just wrestle the doctors, I’ll take that back I’ll wrestle the nurses.”

-Another interesting part of the book is the 8 month hiatus and what went on behind the scenes, Phantom asks if his view on less writing and more wrestler improv is something he’s allowed to do with his current role as Co-GM, “Some interesting things are going to happen to my character after Survivor, but as far as the writing it’s the same as it was. The fact is its national TV, hurry up and get out. You have guys who’ve only been wrestling one to two years, when I was out there after wrestling 2 years and I worked Ricky Steamboat, I watched what Rick Rude did with Steamboat and I asked Ricky ‘What am I missing, what am I doing wrong?’ Stemabot said ‘You’re doing fine Steve you just have to get in tune with your character’ and I look at the guys today and think the same thing about them. They rely too much on high spots, and I pull some aside and ask them what their nickname is, they have no marquee value if they only have two names. Nothing the marketing people can grab onto.” Phantom brings up Garrison Cade, as not having a gimmick, Austin confirms that’s one of the guys he’s spoken to along with Mark Jindrak and Randy Orton. “When I came into the WWF I already had 7 years of experience I knew what I had to do I just had to have the opportunity to do it….That’s what I tell these guys, that if they give you a gimmick that isn’t working it’s up to you to come up with something to get yourself over. That’s where the working relationship with the office comes in, to bounce ideas off of. Change the sombitch around”

-Austin’s working relationship with Eric Bischoff is brought up “That’s a weird deal” and Austin brings up that when he was fired over the phone by Bischoff, “was probably the best thing to ever happen to my career. When the guys came from the WWF to WCW I would have been buried even more into mid-card status, the BS that was going on. I mean all those guys are my friends, but they would have been in control, but I wouldn’t have seen too much Stunning Steve Austin marketing, merchandise or a push to the top. Was I happy when it happened? Hell no!” Phantom brings up a recent Eric Bischoff interview where he claimed that Austin once came to him with an idea to be used as Hulk Hogan’s brother in a tag team when Hogan first came into WCW. Phantom couldn’t imagine Steve ever coming up with such a strange idea, even if it was to get more exposure, “I think he’s been on the bottle, there is no way I would have ever said that. I pitched some ideas to jazz me up a bit, like using a feathered boa. They shot it down, I remember having a conversation with one of the guys and said ‘hey I’m not crazy about it, but don’t shoot down everything that comes my way. I’m open minded.’” Austin feels the WCW office never saw him as more than mid-card and shut down the Hollywood Blondes because they started to get over.

-Austin says he try’s to help some of the younger WWE guys once, if they don’t come around and follow up with him, he won’t approach them anymore. “I’m not going to chase your ass around to teach you how to get over.” He wants to help some guys to get over to help the business, “but it seems like you got a bunch of robots walking around and their just scared to death. Make some damn waves, knock the chips off your shoulders and let’s make some money and have some fun. The wrestling business is supposed to be fun….some of those guys are wound so tight, it’s like ‘Jesus Christ kid relax’”

-Phantom brings up RAW when Steve said to Ric Flair “Watch out or your pacemakers going to blow” as one of the funniest lines he’s hear don RAW in months. “That was a classic and if you look at his face I almost completely busted him because I caught him off guard. He about to bust out into a big smile, we laughed about it after.” Phantom asks if he holds any bitterness towards Flair because he was one of the office people who kept him in the mid-card, “Yeah people like Flair and Kevin Sullivan who had the book didn’t see too much potential in Steve Austin at the time. No animosity towards Ric Flair, in my opinion he’s one of the best wrestlers in the history of the business.” Sir Adam asks how he would rank Kurt Angle, “I don’t think he’s been around long enough, and it was a totally different system back then. You’re talking about guys who went out every night and worked everything out while they were in the ring. But in today’s system, Kurt Angle is one of the best ever….He’s an extremely talented guy, he’s like a prodigy…one of the proudest moments of my career is when I was recovering from a broken back after Booker T put me through a table at Continental Airlines arena and I booked myself for some matches against Kurt to get back in ring shape for Summerslam. There was a shot in Fresno and I blew Kurt up sky high. Here’s this beer-drinking redneck on top of one of the premiere athletes in the world. We had a laugh about it after, but that’s a highlight of my career ‘Blowing up Kurt Angle’”

-Phantom brings up Austin’s return article in RAW Magazine and said it was the most honest thing he ever read in a WWE produced product. “Believe me what you read was the watered down version, the other one was straight up brutality.” In the article it seemed to Sir Adam that the Rock and HHH both hurt Austin’s feelings with the way they handled his departure, were those two of the guys he pulled to the side and spoke with when he returned to WWE? “Yeah they were, with the Rock it was a misunderstanding because we’ve always been friends. And HHH there’s allot of politics involved there, then again we put that aside everything’s been cool since then.” Phantom says that the Rock should be giving Stone Cold a percentage of his movie take because Austin’s the one who brought Rocky to the next level, “I’d tend to agree with you, I don’t need the money but I am the one who put him on the map no doubt about that.”

-On his Booker T feud in a supermarket, “Well I had supermarket experience from my high school days. Booker was a class act, he had so much crap in his hair, he took a hell of an ass whipping.” Phantom asks if he laid into T any harder in return for the back injury, “Hell yeah, it was like a ribbing on the square, I laid some of my sausages in on him…kayfabe the Spanish announce table next time.”

-Steve Austin confirms that he never wanted to work a program with Jeff Jarrett when he was world champion in the WWE. “The deal was I was hotter than hell, and then they bring in this actor guy Ben Stiller and they say ‘Steve you are going to save Ben Stiller from Jeff Jarrett’ and I said why the hell am I saving Ben Stiller what has he ever done for me? But I did it, and give Jeff a stunner, and figured that if I only give him one he’ll be written in to get revenge on me, so I give him another stunner.” Steve then says the creative team wanted him to work a match with Jeff Jarrett the next week to which Steve replied “What?? You want me to work with who? I think it might have been Vince Russo who told me.” Then Austin brought a meeting together with Russo, Vince McMahon, and JR and laid out the fact that he always made it a point that he never wanted to work with Jeff Jarrett “I said f***, sh**, it was one of the best damn cussing jobs I ever did. I said I told you guys I never want to work with Jarrett, I did the Ben Stiller deal and now you are making me look like the bad guy in this. Damn Jeff Jarrett can’t hit the ropes hard enough to break an egg. If you are getting in the ring with me you’d better bring it” Phantom asks if Austin would rather have worked with Ben Stiller than Jarrett to which Austin replies, “Well, Ben Stiller’s got a hell of a drop kick, nah I don’t know. It’s just something where they always knew I never wanted to work with Jeff Jarrett and they forced me in a corner an I had to act like a complete jackass and say no.” Phantom ask if his refusal stems from experiences working with Jeff and Jerry Jarrett back in his territorial days, Austin then tells a story of being promised $100 a night payoffs from the Jarretts. This was his first big deal and he was excited about getting his first check, after working 6 nights “That was allot of money back then especially when you were used to making 20-30 a night. I could have probably afforded a turkey that week, and when I opened up the check in Evansville it was only $340 and I just looked at it deadpan, shocked. I’d been starving for so long down there and now I couldn’t get my turkey, Jeff Jarret walks by takes a look at by check slaps me on the back and says ‘Well, it ain’t gonna grow by looking at it’ and I was like you son of a gun. But that wasn’t the reason I didn’t want to work with him in WWE it was a case of him not hitting the ropes hard enough, and me not bringing him up to my level, but him bringing me down. I’m not out there UFC shoot fighting but Jesus Christ lay some stuff in on me. When I was working with DX people would be walking back with busted lips, eyes, teeth and the fans were going crazy for it. That’s just the way it was.”

-Vince Russo’s name is brought up as being a big part of the WWE attitude era, and how he claims to have been a big part of character development and storylines during that time. Phantom asks Austin if Russo had a part at creating the Stone Cold character, “He gave ideas and stuff like that, but when Vince (McMahon) and I were out there it was all ad-libbing. (Russo) had a good idea here and there, but you saw what happened when he was given the reigns at WCW and it went down the toilet bowl.” Austin then had to leave for a book signing, but gave the guys a little radio advice, “Keep your head in the clouds and keep reaching for the stars”….classic